


Proximity

by leiascully



Series: Five Ways You Didn't Sleep With Gregory House [5]
Category: House M.D.
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-10-10
Updated: 2006-10-10
Packaged: 2017-10-03 05:36:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love does this thing to you, makes you think in metric, makes you know things you didn't even know you were devoting brain power to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Proximity

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: n/a  
> A/N: I did this series for a celebration of SmutTuesday, which is a tradition I hope to spread all over. Spread the word! Tuesdays are for smut.   
> Disclaimer: _House M.D._ and all related characters are property of Heel and Toe Films, Shore Z Productions and Bad Hat Harry Productions in association with NBC Universal Television Studio. I make no money from writing this and no infringement is intended.

You've always been good with distances. You knew each time when your wives decided to leave you; you felt the skid of their eyes as their gazes crossed yours without interest and the widening spaces between you that indifference made. There is a critical point in disintegrating relationships, an insurmountable breadth of misunderstanding. You supposed each time that you could find a way to bridge that distance, but it turned out you were only good at understanding distances and not conquering them. The times you take a moment to feel sorry for yourself it almost makes you laugh, given how good House thinks you are at getting close to people. He's right, as usual, but only half right. You're good at getting close to people, which is an excellent thing for an oncologist saddled with the responsibility of telling people gently that they're going to die. You're not good at keeping them close, which is generally good for your work as well. Your patients die. You have to let them go, care right up until the end and then let go as they're taken away, slipping further and further into their diseases. It is your gift and your awful burden to understand the hundred signs that proximity is no longer enough.

That was how you understood; finally: you always know where House is in a room, glass walls, lead walls, no walls. You sense his position with respect to yours. You are acutely aware of the way he looms into your personal space and the difference in millimeters between a miserable day and a glad one. Love does this thing to you, makes you think in metric, makes you know things you didn't even know you were devoting brain power to. And that little ache, that vague emptiness when you watch him lean over Cuddy's shoulder or crowd up disconcertingly into whatever Cameron or Chase is doing. It happened with Julie and Debbie and Grace and every one of the others. The only thing different with House is that it never stops happening.

So you wait, fighting it during the day, choking on his name in the shower as you lean into your orgasm. In the evenings you try to chase him with a beer, but House isn't the same as whiskey and you can't wash him down to be processed and passed through your system. The burn of him stays with you. You wait for the moment where he walks away, millimeters turning to centimeters and then meters, and you feel the way something slips. Your chest aches with waiting until you can hardly breathe some days. But he walks away a hundred times and your eyes follow him as sure and steady as the first time.

Julie slips away, though, and this time you're not sure if you missed the moment for watching House. You could never wash away all the evidence of your sins. You can't remember the last time you touched her with your hands that have House's name written across the creases. At least with Julie it has been sins of omission more than sins of commission. You have not been with her much, but you haven't been with anyone else either, not really, except for House, and that was always true. So you have nowhere to go and he asks you to move in, and it is torture. There is close and then there is close, and he is down to skin in the other room showering as you sit on the couch with your hand straying to your crotch against your will. You lie. You leave. You had never known that there was a critical point of an insurmountable nearness and you are so staggered by this that you sleep with a patient.

Someone else's bed isn't far enough. You have been too close to House and now you can't get away. And he has some proximal magic of his own: you step into his orbit and he knows. His gaze sharpens.

"Are you going to move back in?" he asks, forced nonchalance, leaning too hard on his cane. I decided I want you to stay, you remember him saying. Come back, you want him to say, but he isn't the type. I love you, you want him to say, but he isn't really the type for that either. You can't remember hearing him say it to Stacy even. This is as close as he gets to emotional: he is standing near you, leaning out a little as if he isn't sure about it, asking this question. He is thirty-six centimeters away from you. You could mark off the measurements with your eyes closed.

"I don't think so," you tell him. Too close. Too far. Too many mornings of strangled half-moans as he slept a few rooms away, and your eyes closed hard against the sight of his shampoo and your shampoo on the same little plastic shelf like some couple. Like the two of you were some couple and he was something you'd be able to come home to for years and years. Like he was someone you suddenly had a right to be near, shoulder to shoulder like your stupid shampoo bottles pressed against each other in the damp of the shower. They touch all day with the drops of water bridging the infinitesimal gap, distance at last rendered neutral in solution.

You always figured if it was going to be anyone held against him that way, it would probably be Cuddy: she's known him longest, she's put together like a work of art, all brains and curves, and he has that erotic fascination with women who won't let him get away with things. Hell, you've entertained more than a few midnight dreams of Cuddy, but you know that isn't the way she thinks of you, and House is territorial even about things he'll never act on. You want him to act on you but you know he won't, so you refuse even though you slept better to the squeaky lullaby of Steve McQueen's exercise wheel than you ever remember doing next to Julie.

You're resolved. You're strong. You are coping with this frighteningly strong nameless thing that exists between you and House. Grace is gone, but you go over to pack your things. There's no reason for your head to hurt and your joints to ache a little from the dainty work of putting your ties away so they won't crease, but they do. You chalk it up to the psychosomatic effects of misery and you leave your key in her mailbox and make hotel reservations.

You go over to House's anyway that night with your couple of suitcases, and no one answers when you knock, so you use your key. The thought of the hotel was too lonely. Canned soup in House's kitchen is better than dinner at the nicer restaurants: tonight you want the comfort of knowing where the spice rack is, and which spoon will hold the soup best. You know it's a bad idea the moment you step through the door, but your choice was made. You can feel him meters away, doing something in another room. You hope he'll ignore you or at least that there's no hooker in there with him. In the kitchen you find a can of beef stew and dump it into a saucepan, shaking in a little cumin and some parsley. House has an excellent range of spices, though you're not sure he ever uses them. You butter a couple of slices of bread and spoon garlic onto them, finding things in the fridge left over from your stay here, the vinaigrette you made and some salad makings that are about to go bad. Might as well feast for your failures.

When he notices your presence and begins to move toward you, you can sense it. His cane is nearly silent on the carpet, but you have the advantage of long familiarity and tile in the kitchen. You expect some quip about how you've come crawling back, but he says nothing, so after a few minutes you say quietly, "There's enough for two, if you haven't eaten."

He is two and a half meters away. The cane measures off the irregularities in his step as he approaches and pokes the spoon into the stew, sniffing. "In my house," he says. "Eating my food. What's the differential for too much cumin?"

"It's fine," you say, already exasperated, taking the spoon from him. He should have been a psychologist, trying to diagnose your mood from your choice of seasoning. "As for the food, I stocked the pantry pretty well before I left, so I think I'm entitled. If it really bothers you, I'll buy dinner next time we go out."

"I'm not bothered," he says mildly. He always gets so reasonable when you're illogically upset. "Just curious. You said you weren't coming." He is close, only a couple of centimeters away. You imagine you can smell the Vicodin on his breath, a little bitter.

"Changed my mind," you say. Your hands are tense on the spoon handle. You want to kiss him or kick him. You drop the spoon into the stew and start slicing tomatoes roughly, ripping them instead of cutting them neatly, and you can feel him watching you. Then he limps away a slow forty-eight centimeters at a time to the accompaniment of the rubber thud of the cane, and even though he's going, your shoulders are still so tight that your neck starts hurting. The heat in your chest is steady as a stone. Steady as love. You flinch from the word and nick your finger with the knife and swear, low and hard, gripping the countertop.

He is as God made him and apparently he's made to drive you crazy, because he is most of your pain and a good three-quarters of your joy. House makes you sick. He makes you fly. You've never been more high than the lazy evenings you've spent here, buzzed on Chinese food and listening to him improvise on the piano. You remember the easy warmth of it: the way the couch creaking under you as you stretched, the carbonation of the beer effervescing through you, the top button of your shirt undone, the rough unpracticed sound of his laughter, and the heaviness of your arms that ached to wrap around him. It would have been easy, so easy, to walk across to him and put your arms over his shoulders as he played, and press a kiss to that soft spot that must exist behind his jaw. Maybe he will play tonight and you will finally get up your courage.

Steve McQueen wakes up and starts gnawing at his water bottle and you force yourself to calm down. Slowly, slowly, the long muscles in your back relax, and over the bubble of the stew you hear the sluice of water begin in the bathroom. House is in the shower, probably having downed another Vicodin and a couple of fingers of whiskey, and you envy his ease. He is home and you feel half at home and half displaced, awkward as a middle school dance. House has never been a sanctuary, but you sometimes wish he could be. You try not to admit it, but you are lonely, achingly lonely, and you have been for a long while, and the space is not filled by fucking patients or having dinner with Cuddy.

You turn off the stew when it starts to burn and spoon half of it into a bowl, neatly arranged on the plate with the garlic bread and the salad. The stew is smoky, delicious, and you wonder with a tiny thrill of triumph what the differential is for being so damn righter than House, however ungrammatical that is. The water sounds in the other room stop as you savor your dinner, and you feel House getting closer millimeter by millimeter, but you're determined to ignore him. He eases into the room and you poke your fork sedately into your salad though the little hairs on the back of your neck are standing up. He is right behind you and you will not pay attention to him, you will not, and then he puts those long fingers into the collar of your shirt, the tips of his fingers just resting on your clavicles and you're lost. You melt the way you've seen some of your patients do when they finally stop fighting. A terminal case of Gregory House. Your fork clatters to the table, little spots of vinaigrette on everything. But you're just there, anchored by his fingers dipping in your suprasternal notch and his thumb against the side of your neck, just grazing the tendon, a distracted caress.

"Were you ever going to say anything?" he asks, and his voice even is whiskey. You sop it up, the exquisite burn of being near him. "You didn't even send me a note with the little boxes to check yes or no. At least Cameron had the balls to say something."

"I'm not Cameron," you say, feeling the vibrations of your own voice against his fingertips.

"Thank God for that," he says, and strokes up your throat, delicate as a surgeon. You have been hard since the moment he touched you. His skin is hot from the shower, the warmth radiating off him, and the moisture left on him makes his fingers drag deliciously over your skin. He undoes a button of your shirt, experimental and a little rough, and then leans down over the chair back and bites your neck, just at the trapezius muscle. You arch in the chair, choking on your desire for him. Gregory House was never gentle and you're glad of it. You could not face his tenderness tonight, too much like pity.

"I always thought it would be Cuddy," you say, torturing yourself, challenging him. The edges of his teeth have left a mark. You can feel the blood pounding at the spot as he pulls at your skin with his lips and tongue. His stubble, water-softened, prickles on your skin and you want to rub his face all over your body until you're scoured by desire.

"Oh, you know," he says vaguely. "Lise and I aren't like that. She'd destroy me in bed. Mankiller Cuddy." Any other day you would press but for now you need to get his clothes off. You like men. You like men a lot, the grunts and the salt and the planes of muscle, and you haven't slept with a man in a long time. When you turn, offering him your mouth, he is only wearing a towel. His skin is spattered with drops of water and he's the most beautiful thing you've ever seen, still lean and muscled and just exactly how a man should look. You try to stand but his mouth crashes down against yours and you scrabble at the table, trying to push your plate away as he presses you backwards, the edge of the table painful against your spine. You push back, shoving your hands underneath his towel so that it falls, pulling his hips against yours as you try to get up, working at keeping both of you steady because you're worried about his leg except that the way his tongue is moving in your mouth is making you forget that you're worried about anything.

"Couch," you gasp, and wrestle him across the room, kissing him hard enough to overbalance him even as you support his weight and try not to trip over the shoes you're toeing off. Fuck you, you say silently against his mouth, fuck me. His incisors slide across your tongue. His hand is down your pants and his palm isn't really wet enough, but it feels so damn good, the pressure and heat and texture of his hand on your cock. You press him into the leather of the couch, using your weight and your stability against him, and you drag your mouth down his body to his cock, and then you tease him. You graze him with your lips, flicking your tongue along his length, and he tangles his hands in your hair. There is a bottle of lotion next to the couch and you reach for it. You rub the lotion into the backs of his thighs as you take him into your mouth and he groans, his fingers clutching and knotting and you're glad you didn't get that haircut. He is hot in your mouth with the remembered taste of salt and you want to swallow him whole. You knead along his thighs as you work your tongue down the underside of his cock, using your cheeks and your throat: you've always been good with your mouth.

House groans again and drags you up by your hair. You surrender to him slowly, fighting the pain in your scalp, fighting him. He lets go with one hand and fumbles at your pants, releasing you, and you kick them off impatiently, still wearing socks and your dress shirt. You don't care how unsexy a look it might be, because he's found the lotion and his palm is wrapped around your cock again.

"I'm better with my hands," he says, not at all apologetically, and his fingers work you like he's playing scales. You think of the way his stubble would burn against your thighs and agree, your slippery fingers stroking him. His hands are like flames passing over you. You imagine that your skin singes where he touches you. You're rutting against his stomach now, the hairs on his stomach crisp against your head, and his hips jerk against yours in an equally desperate rhythm, his shaft rubbing along yours and ten of your collective fingers between you.

"House," you gasp, trying to warn him as you feel the familiar tightening in your balls and the concentration of your entire being in your lower abdomen.

"Don't stop," he growls, his mouth and his cock bumping against yours, and his stubble scrapes your lips and you're dissolving into him the way you always wanted to, the moisture between you filling all the space so that you're touching everywhere, sweat and semen and the end of some barriers, and you think suddenly of salt bridges and laugh into his throat, spent and helpless. He turns his face, lazy now instead of feverish, and kisses you, and you kiss him back slow and deep before realizing that he doesn't taste of whiskey the way you expected.

"I thought you were drinking," you say, hiding your face against his shoulder, worried about your weight on his leg but too limp to move.

"Wanted you to know I'd do it sober," he says, and you feel him stretch out one long arm for the pill bottle on the table. The prickle of his stubble against your cheekbones as he swallows almost masks the prickle in your eyes, because you're not sure you'll ever get closer to I love you.

"You need another shower," you say after a long moment of just breathing, your chest against his, and he must be hurting because he lets you help him up after you roll off the couch.

"Going to soap my back?" he says, and leans on you on the way to the bathroom, and as you turn on the water, you think enough, this is just enough, this destructive, deep, perfect affection, because somehow you're starting to heal as you hold your fingers under the tap to test the temperature.


End file.
